Dhru Purohit Show - The Battle for Our Children’s Attention: How We Can Make Them Resilient In the Face of Society’s Negative Influences And Why We Need To Honor Gender Differences with Dr. Shefali Tsabary

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Fatty15, Our Place, and Branch Basics. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, I sit down with Dr. Shefali Tsabary to discuss the hidden battlefield parents and children are facing today. Dr. Shefali shares how algorithms and social media are hijacking attachment and attention, and the impact this is having on our children’s neurochemistry. She breaks down the red flags she’s seeing in both boys and girls, along with the common mistakes parents make when navigating the challenges of the modern world. She also explains what children need at each stage of development and how to rebalance their lives to restore the connection, resilience, and independence children need to thrive. Dr. Shefali is a clinical psychologist, a New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of the Conscious Parenting movement, redefining how families understand selfhood, connection, and children's inner lives. Her work sits at the intersection of psychology and consciousness, tracing the hidden forces that shape identity, relationships, and the way we inhabit the world. By bringing Western psychology and Eastern wisdom into lived practice, she offers a path for children and the adults who raise them to know themselves more fully. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Shefali dive into: (00:00) The Battle for Our Children’s Attention (4:38) How Technology Is Changing Conscious Parenting (7:16) Social Media Hijacks Connection (15:01) Red Flags Parents Should Watch for in Girls (21:14) Red Flags Parents Should Watch for in Boys (27:15) Parenting Mistakes We Don’t Realize We’re Making (30:41) Why Boys and Girls Need Different Things (31:41) This Generation of Children Is Different (42:45) Why Telling Girls to “Be Good” Can Backfire (54:38) When Children Become Symbols of Success (1:00:24) How to Own Your Mistakes  (1:05:02) Why Parents Were Never Meant to Do It Alone (1:08:52) How the Mother-Child Relationship Shapes Us (1:13:43) What It Really Means to Be Present for Your Children (1:17:07) How We Can Take Childhood Back Also mentioned in this episode: Raising Conscious Daughters: Building Confidence, Courage, and Inner Power in an Anxious World Raising Conscious Sons: Cultivating Purpose, Connection, and Inner Power in a Chaotic World The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs Don’t Let Politics Cloud Your View of What’s Going On With Teens and Depression For more on Dr. Shefali, follow her on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or visit her Website. This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Fatty15, Our Place, and Branch Basics. Right now, Bon Charge is offering my community 15% off their Red Light mask. Just go to boncharge.com/dhru and use code DHRU to save 15%. Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Reduce your toxic load by upgrading your cookware! Go to fromourplace.com today and use promo code DHRU at checkout to receive 10% off any order. Branch Basics is now available nationwide at Target. Shop their lineup of safer cleaning essentials, including laundry detergent, surface cleaners, dishwasher tablets, and stain remover. And if you're grabbing the Premium Starter Kit, you can get 15% off at ⁠BranchBasics.com⁠ with my code DHRU.  Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Chavali, welcome back to the podcast. Two new books, so excited, raising conscious daughters, raising conscious sons. I'm super pumped. I hope everybody in the audience, whether you want to be a parent one day, whether you're a grandparent, we have to understand something important from my perspective, and I'd love to start off here. There's a battle going on right now. And whether we realize it or not, as parents, as grandparents, as parents to be,

we are on that battlefield. and the stakes are high. Could you describe the lay of the land as kind of like the benevolent general sitting on top of the mountain? What's going on in this battlefield? Who are the players that are there? And what's at stake?

Yeah, and I hate calling our current reality a battlefield, right? But it is in many ways, and we need to be prepared. And the battlefield really is an algorithmic abduction of childhood. And with that comes our children's attention, our children's attachment, trust, and really a hijacking of their innocence, their sense of safety, belonging. And that's what's coming at our children, not only from technology, but from parents also being abducted. So a child gets their sense of self, inner coherence, well-being, a view of the world,

Is the world a hostile place or is it a safe place from its relationship with its earliest caregivers? Let's call them parents, right? In yesteryear, it was the village. But now it's the parent. So I hate to put all the responsibility on the parent, but it is the parent in the modern nuclear family. So the child is looking to the parent to be validated, to get a sense of my feelings are worthy. They are right. and I want to be attuned to and soothe

so that I can develop that inner strength on my own one day. If the child looks to the parent and the parent is distracted, the parent is anxious, the parent is dysregulated, then the child fails to get that consistent, coherent, external validation from which the child will develop an internal validation. And when that constant nurturing is ruptured, fractured, disorganized, disconnected, that attachment system fails to provide the child with inner connection. And that's where dysfunction breeds itself.

So, you know, in your own world, you see it all around you. We can't even wait at a train stop or a train station without checking our phones and constantly getting dopamine after dopamine. So the way I like to phrase it is that our girls are going through a crisis of selfhood and very unique pressures on her to be better, to be perfect, to be all things to all people. And boys are going through a crisis of masculinity, where they are being directionally challenged,

meaning they are so overstimulated by dopamine, that they don't know how to channel their sexuality, their testosterone, and they are imploding. You know, and girls internalize over-anxious, over-ruminate, over-think, over-ponder, over-doubt, and boys are becoming numb, and they don't have a place to put all their physical energy. You know, boys are physical primarily.

Girls are more emotional. And I don't mean to be reductive. You can have a very physical girl and a very emotional boy. But if I was to be very plain about it, each one's neurochemistry, the girls and the boys, are being uniquely threatened by technology. And technology understands brain chemistry better than we parents do. And that's why I chose to write books by sex,

not to be reductive again, but to teach parents that we need to nurture each one's neurochemistry in a very particular way and understand our children's vulnerabilities in a very particular way. Otherwise, the algorithm will attack them and predate upon them and we won't know how to help them. What I'm hearing from you is that there is a real-time experiment

for the first time in human history where we're no longer living in these tight-knit villages, which had its cons as well too, but there was a lot of bonuses that were there. there's a real-time experiment that's happening right now, not just on kids. It's easy to look at technology and say, it's technology's fault, it's just the kids,

but it's also happening on adults as well, too. Yes. And that's the part that if we're going to be part of this conversation and learn and step into our power as conscious parents, we have to understand that we are also being manipulated and we're putting that manipulation on our kids as well. Is that what I'm hearing from me? Yes. So when I began teaching conscious parenting

with my first book, The Conscious Parent, in 2010, back then I was teaching parents that in order to raise healthy children, we as parents need to raise our own inner children. And if we don't heal ourselves and heal the belief systems that traumatize us or that create dysfunction in our minds and lives, we won't be able to raise healthy children.

That was back then, Drew. That was 16 years ago. Now I'm teaching conscious parenting because it's not just a fight for our children's attention or the parents' attention. It's a fight for attachment. The parents and our children are now looking to algorithms to give them safety, to give them a sense of emotional connection, to give them emotional well-being. So if we're going for our dopamine to external sources and we are going for safety to external sources,

then the relationship loses its influence. And the only influence we have on each other is the dopamine we create together, the connection, the safety we give each other. If children are not going to get that from their parents, parents will lose all influence on their children. And the algorithm will completely manipulate them. And like you said, we adults are being manipulated by the algorithm

and don't even realize it. So do we want to raise zombies? do we want to be zombies manipulated by a capitalistic, oligarchic culture that predates on our attention and directs our attention where it needs to direct us. So we need to take childhood back.

We need to take parenting back and we need to raise children as they need to be raised, which is within the very present contained and hopefully conscious container of the parent. It's easy to, look at in the world and see how so many things are wrong. And we all have a viewpoint on that. But just to make sure that people are connecting the dots that are there,

what's the problem, the external manifestation of what you're seeing by parents and kids being hijacked by the algorithm. Give us some top line thoughts, ideas, other things. Like, what are you noticing boys? What are you noticing your girls? And what are you noticing in parents when it comes to the hijacking by this algorithmic culture? Children a decade ago was spending an average of 13 to 15 hours outside, playing in the neighborhoods, exploring, getting tired,

experimenting with each other in community. Now that number is five to eight hours a week. Just there, the loss of unstructured playtime, community bonding, living in nature, being physical, being exploratory, has now been decimated. Now they're sitting sedentary, in front of a screen, and you know, being a man, how dangerous that can be for a boy,

filled with testosterone, needing physical release and channeling, to be sitting on his energy, yes? Number two, there is so much stimulation online that is retraining our children's dopamine receptors to need dopamine at higher and higher levels. That's why Instagram, for example, keeps changing its algorithm. to be three-minute reels. Now it's 1.5 minute reels. Now movies are a minute. You know, we're trying to capture the dopamine need by feeding it. But you feed the beast. It just keeps

needing more. So unstructured playtime, the lack of freedom that our children have to live in nature, to live unsupervised, right? Now they go from one structured activity to another. They are living within a two-dimensional reality and not having real-life experiences like you and I used to have. We used to go to movie theaters and be in community, just at the movie theater. That's gone.

We used to go to restaurants. That's reducing. Now children are ordering stuff home. We used to go on the bus together. Now we're taking Uber's. Now we won't even have the Uber driver. We're going to have the driverless car. So we are removing human contact.

And by removing human contact, you remove the messiness and the friction that comes with interpersonal relationships, which is a training ground for emotional resilience and stability and competence. We're removing challenge. Children now don't know how to wait. They don't know how to be bored, which means they don't know how to be creative.

The more bored you are, the brain's default mode network turns on, which then releases creative. impulsive and your capacity to build. All of that is being numbed now. So that's just what's happening in childhood. Let's talk about girls and boys in particular. Girls have more oxytocin coming from estrogen, and girls by nature are wiring, and I'm talking broad stereotypes.

Okay, I don't want people to come after me. A girl, because of her estrogen and her oxytocin, can bond much more easily than a boy, perhaps. And because of that, girls are more wired. to be relationally sensitive, relationally attuned, relationally cued in, you know, ask any mother of a daughter

and she'd be like, my goodness, my daughter is on my case. She wants to talk, she wants to process. She notices, you know, eye contact signal, she notices emojis and exclamation points and nuance and tone because girls survive based on how safe she feels. Because we are perhaps less physically dominant, we need emotion.

cues to feel safe. So we're highly attuned to that. Now, take that brain and now put her into social media where she's being monitored and valued and validated by strangers. Right? You have literally put your daughter out to be prey to strangers. And so she's getting feedback from so many people

that her brain cannot handle it. So she feels so much more pressure to become something because she wants to be seen, she wants to be understood, but that is on overload now. So girls are feeling this enormous pressure to perform and to be validated. So they're trying to be skinnier and prettier and have plastic surgery earlier

and beauty interventions earlier because they're constantly comparing themselves. That's how girls are. You know, we're constantly pitting ourselves against each other, because the toxic patriarchy has made us turn against each other. But now that is on overdrive on social media. You know, that's why they're filters.

Why do we have filters on social media? Why? Think about it. Because it plays into the girl's desire to be beautiful, to be perfect, and then feeds that insecurity, which can actually never be fed, which then feeds capitalistic culture, because she will then be fed ads from Sephora and makeup and beauty products and shoes and bags and clothes. And it's the cycle that the girl gets on,

that the algorithm feeds because it understands her brain chemistry. You know, there are studies now that have shown that if a girl takes selfies and then deletes them, the algorithm picks up on it and then sends her makeup tutorials and makeup ads and face products and beauty products because they pick up on her insecurity. She's feeling down today.

By the moment, right, they're picking up on your daughter's moods and feeding her things in the algorithm that will lead her to buy things and feel worse about herself. So that's what's happening to our girls. And if we don't step in to protect them, to immunize them, to make them feel worthy without external validation, we will lose them.

So in my book for the girls, raising conscious daughters, I talk about how to give them a sense of agency, a sense of inner validation, sovereignty, belonging, voice. And I teach parents through case examples how they can do it mindfully with their daughters. I talk about body dysmorphia. They're more anxious.

One in three girls have an anxiety disorder. They've begun dieting by the age of 10. They are cutting themselves. by the age of 13, they're self-harming. All of this because of this extreme pressure to be extraordinary. So I talk about that, and I was alarmed, Drew. I did research 50 boys, 50 girls, and interviewed them.

And I was alarmed, mainly because I thought in my generation, we had it hard. You know, I thought we had pressure to be skinny and beautiful and look white and blonde and blue-eyed. But they, have an even more extraordinary pressure to be an insane level of beautiful than I have ever had in my life.

And I thought my generation had it worse. So it's very hard for our daughters today. So in my book, Raising Conscious Daughters, every chapter gives the red flags and every chapter gives the blueprint. Can you just mention one of those red flags? Yeah. There's so much in the book that's there,

but just as a little bit of a teaser, as a little bit of a preview, what's one red flag for daughters? Our skin ages for so many reasons. Pollution is one. UV exposure is a huge one, stress, and just aging itself changes our skin. One of the simplest tools we have to support healthy skin aging is red light therapy. The one I've been recommending to family and friends is Bond Charges Red Light face mask.

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and yummy berry blast gummies for kids. Fatty 15 is truly on a mission to support healthy aging for all, including all ages and all stages of life. If you check them out today, you can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription starter kit by going to Fatty 15 slash Drew and using the code Drew at checkout. Again, that's Fatty, F-A-T-T-Y-5.com, Fatty-15.com slash D-H-R-U, and use the code D-H-R-U at checkout. Well, if your daughter begins to spend too much time in front of the mirror, spend too much time in the bathroom, she begins to tuck her tummy in. This will happen around the age of eight or nine.

She'll begin to wonder if she's pretty. She'll want to go to Sephora. She'll want to compare herself more and more. Mommy, do I look like her? Do I look like her? She'll want to go to the salon more, get her nails done more. And at first, it looks so cute.

Oh, what's wrong with that? Let's all get our nails done. No harm on the surface. But underneath is a burgeoning, ferocious, voracious, appetite for needing to look better, to feel worthy. It's coming. So we don't want to suppress

it because that's going to just take it underground and it'll come out later. You can't suppress it essentially. We want to address it. And rebalance it. And rebalance it and let them know that we know that there's a beast coming and we need to call it and name the beast before the beast overtakes her

because she doesn't know why she wants to go to the salon. She's not conscious. She just realizes, oh, this girl gets all this attention. I want to look like her. I want to look like that influencer, because culture is praising that influencer's body looks. Or I want to look like my mom. Or I want to look like my mom.

So let's talk about that. That's where the mother becomes such a primary influence for the daughter. And I had to watch that in my own child's upbringing, you know, my own insecurities. How are they breeding my daughter's insecurities? I had to really heal myself, and I'm still not fully healing.

healed because culture has done its own number on me. And I'll never say I'm fully healed because I'm humble to how culture has effed me up in terms of standards of beauty. I mean, it is any woman who says she doesn't have an insanely critical voice is a woman who is not aware of how impeded she is by that critical voice. It's better to know the critical voice than to act like you don't have a critical voice.

It's okay to have a critical voice. There's no way you don't have a critical voice. You have to just understand how you can relate to that critical voice and not let it overpower you. Women are plagued, we're besieged. We are in an inner battle constantly being told that we are not good enough and we need to look younger and prettier and sexier. And men don't have that to the degree women have.

As mothers, we need to have compassion for ourselves and see it coming in our daughters, preempt it, call it, name it, and teach her how to relate to it. She will never defeat it, but she can learn how to manage it. Now, boys. The reason I wrote this book Raising Conscious Sons, I actually started this project because I was worried about the adult male problem we have in the world today.

I call it the wounded male problem. We have a wounded male problem, and we need to call it. And we can keep yelling at men and calling them misogyny. and call the patriarchy toxic and call men pedophiles and predators because they are. And we can keep protesting and taking them to court and sending them to jail.

But that is not where the problem begins. The problem begins in childhood, in how we raise our sons. So that's why I began this project, really because I was worried about the men in the world today and the men I have around me and the men we have in leadership. And each one of them, in leadership,

is really a tantruming toddler, a narcissist who wasn't ever healed. And so we need to go back and ask ourselves, how can we as parents raise our boys with a conscious masculinity, where they understand what being male is and that it's a beautiful thing? You know, boys today are being given the message,

don't be like girls, and please don't grow up to be a . That's what they're being told. But they're not being given the blueprint of how to be male and how to handle my testosterone and my dopamine and my drive and my risk-taking

and my sexuality and my desire. I need help and telling me not to be a-a-uh is not going to help me. That's just going to shame me. What are the red flags for boys? The biggest red flag for boys is that boys are not physical enough today.

they're not challenged enough, they're not moving enough, they're not wild enough. Now again, I know I'm a little bit of a preemptor, but I'm preempting people saying, oh, why is she saying that boys need to be wild and boys need to be boys? Girls also need to be physical and given free outdoor time.

But putting boys who have 15 times the testosterone than girls into circle time at the age of four and five, and then telling them to talk and to verbalize their feelings and trying to tell them that they should talk like a girl, like talk about your feelings, is anathema to a boy.

Boys' interhemispheric connection turns online much later than girls. Boys are physical more than they are verbal. Boys are bottom-up processors, girls are topped out. Girls can talk about their, emotions, which means their left brain talking and their right brain feeling are connected. Boys don't have that interconnection. They can't talk about their feelings.

They'll show you how they feel. So because we don't understand how boys are showing us how they feel, we keep punishing them, blaming them, caging them, containing them and suppressing them. And on top of that, if the father in the home was also raised without an emotionally attuned father, he doesn't know her to manage feelings. So he's going to also not read the boy's cues because no one read his cues. And then if the mother had some male trauma in her life, which is almost every woman, she will look at that wild male energy in her son and want to cage it and suppress it.

She won't let that boy ever overpower her because in her head she's got the script, I will not let one more man dominate me, right? But the boy just has wild energy and he's dominating. But he's scary for the mother. I've seen so many women, especially single mothers, inadvertently emasculate their boys because it's scary energy. So boys are not moving enough, they're not physical enough. They are being treated like, you know, don't be like girls,

as if that's a bad thing, right? But the misogyny of culture, of culture has made us teach our boys, don't be like girls, but don't be like that. And so they don't have a blueprint. Then when they turn teenagers, a mother cannot initiate a boy into manhood. A stable, conscious man needs to do that. And for the large part, men are kind of emotionally absent. Now, your generation of fathers are more tuned in and more present.

But you also were raised by fathers who were not very present. So it's your first rodeo. So boys are being initiated into adulthood by porn and the manisphere. And we need to step in, especially at 12, 13, 14, to give them the right of passage to initiate sexuality in a beautiful way. They need to understand sexual consent.

They need to understand their boundaries. They need to understand how to handle rejection. You will be rejected by a girl, and that's okay. And you must respond. that and know is explicit it's not implied it's explicit it's always something you need to hear you know and don't if it's not there doesn't mean it's yes it needs to be explicitly said to you from a girl but we need to teach them that and we're not teaching them that and and many boys are you know jacking off to porn in their bedrooms

and the mothers are thinking that my son is okay or he's escaping into video video games for hours, but we're thinking he's okay because he isn't crying like my daughter is. He isn't anxious like my daughter is. Yeah, because he's numbing and he's soothing himself through this dopamine from porn and video games. So these are big red flags. Couple things that I want to highlight here.

There's a bunch of, in addition to these red flags, you talk about these mistakes that parents made unknowingly, because often maybe they were raised in that same environment. With boys, you say one of the worst sort of phrase to sort of project on a boy or to tell a boy is, use your words. Yeah. Right? You were kind of hinting that, but use your words is like the phrase that a lot of people,

especially parents who think that they're doing a good job of like, hey, don't be physical. Use your word. That phrase is so incredibly damaging, especially for boys, because as you mentioned, that's not always how they communicate. The boys who are rough housing and just, you know, going crazy inside and they want to have conflict and play fight and use their body, you need to throw them into the sandpit.

Go, be more physical. Go out there. Everybody, 10 laps around the house, everybody on a scavenger hunt, go climb that tree, go crazy in the mud. The worst thing to tell a boy when he's got all this physical energy is to sit still and talk to me about your feelings. And then the boy feels so embarrassed and so ashamed, because he can't access his words at that time.

He's showing you that he's got all this energy. He just needs to let it discharge and channel it. You know, the other day, a mother came to me, three boys, and she's like, I'm going crazy, right? I've got three monkeys in the house. I don't know what to do. And I said to her, you know, I hope your house, your apartment, is an obstacle course.

And she said, what do you mean? I said, oh, if you have three boys and you don't have a gymnasium in your house or an obstacle course, they're going to go crazy and drive you crazy. So she's like, what do you mean? I said, well, everything needs to be an adventure. You know, everything needs to be a tunnel

or a mountain that they need to climb. If they have to brush their teeth, they should be finding the toothbrush for 30 minutes before they have to brush their teeth. If you want cooperation, first they have to discharge all their energy. Everything needs to be a challenge. That's testosterone.

It's the pursuit of risk and stimulation and new adventure. And if you want them to cooperate, you have to burn some of that testosterone down to then calm them down, right? And she was like, oh my goodness, I didn't even think of that. All I've been doing all day is yelling at them, telling them, don't run, sit down, follow the rules, stand in line, be still,

and the boys go even crazier, right? It's because their neurochemistry is just different. Is she a single mom, or is there a father in the house? Is there a male affair? There is a father, but the father was working all the time. Got it. But the father did say, as I was talking to the mother, see, see, like he kept saying,

see, I told you, I told you. So I asked him, I said, you're safe now. Tell me what you mean by C.C. And he's like, I always tell her, you know, let boys be wild. He's like, I was a wild boy. And now we live in these, you know, containers, these bubbles, these anesthetized, little, you know, immunized, bound-red containers, which are so harmful to boys.

Boys need to be let out wild fruit. scraping knees, bruised, coming back, like, let's go to the hospital, you know. That's how boys learn about regulation through the embodiment of their energy, girls as well, but to a much lesser degree. You know, in addition to the things that you've shared about the different hormone levels and other things is that it's known that the female brain has more neuro connections from left to right. So their women can, historically, they're more.

more interested in people than they are things. Yes. And then for young men, boys, there are more front to back. So boys tend to be interested more in things, cars, trucks, this, that, whatever. This is the way that the divine universe designed it and there's variation within side of that component. But to treat every kid or to put them in the same bucket is to do a disservice around the beauty that is designed the human being and how we're meant to, you know, raise this next generation of people. And, you know, that's a really great place before I talk about one of the,

you know, big mistakes that people often make with women. You know, every generation feels that the next generation has, you know, issues. Issues. Issues. Is lost. Is listening to the wrong music, is getting this, that. But there is something unique that's going on now that you're highlighting. Just remind our audience, what is that unique thing? What's different than just saying this next generation is, you know, losing the art of conversation, losing the art of interpersonal relationships, is losing the art of this. What's unique to this time period that we're in? Eating high quality nutritious food is a big priority in our home. And part of that means being just as thoughtful about the cookware we use to prepare the delicious food in our home. And now that my

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We're super appreciated it. We are in such a unique moment, these last 10, 15 years, with the rise of AI and the rise of technology and the sophistication of it, that it has now invaded the place of human relationship. overtaken the place of human relationships. We are now more reliant on the machine than we are on our own, inner spirit, in a guidance,

in a governance, and our own brains, then we are on the machine. So by eroding interpersonal contact and intra-personal agency, we are losing what it means to be human at an accelerated pace that we are not even adapting to. Like, even if we were to lose it, we should go through it slowly.

It's an onslaught, and the rate of change is too fast for us to adapt and stabilize. When we erode interpersonal connection to the degrees that we now are, and we take away intrapersonal agency, right? Children don't even know how to add anymore. They don't know how to memorize anymore. They don't know how to use their own spatial awareness.

to find places and things. We are literally cutting away our capacity to be self-reliant. And that comes at a price. We become more fragile. We actually become less resilient. Why do you think we are in the worst mental health crisis in modern history?

You would think we are living in the most luxurious times. Everything's on our apps. Why is mental health so? so cataclysmically fragile. It's because we have removed what it takes for a human being to be a thriving human being. And we're doing it to ourselves.

It's like we're committing suicide. We are really stupid to be doing this to our children and ourselves in real time for the sake of luxury, for the sake of comfort. You know, we have gone past comfort now to indulgence, entitlement, apathy, laziness, and soon we'll go to the point of zombification, like in the movie Wally, right?

We will become Wally's. We're already almost there. What are we doing to ourselves? And if you see the people who are leading this anti-humanist movement, the trans-human movement, the super technological movement, if you really look at them, you can see that they are not really into the human connection movement, you know, they are very differently wired and they are more into capitalism and domination

and the future. What about the present? What about this beautiful capacity we have to be there for each other? And in this quest for idealism, we will kill what it means to be human. You know, we were talking about our daughters. So much of the data that's out there, the New York Times did this big study survey. There's a few others that are there we'll link to in the show notes. It seems that we definitely are 100% going through a mental health crisis.

Within that, Western societies are suffering a lot more. And then within that, if we look at like America, the worst mental health, the worst state of anxiety, depression tends to be women. And the more educated you are and the more liberal you are, that there's more worse mental health that's there. So it seems like we're on a spectrum. The spectrum is we don't want to be neurodivergent, autistically disconnected AI over here, but also on this other side, we don't want to be so into the idea that fundamentally we're being controlled by all capitalism, every leader is bad, everybody's racist, climate change is going to ruin us all. It's not that there's

not truth to those things that are there. But if we are hijacked in both extremes, we start to lose our agency and feel that we can make a difference in society and that at least we can start with our own home and raise in a different way. There are fundamental problems. But it seems that if you're stuck on either one of these sides, you're giving up your own power to say that we can, that I believe in team human and, okay, things are bad,

but we can do something. That's exactly why I wrote these two books, because it's one thing to be educated and aware and take your head out of the sand. We need to be aware that this is a storm at a different level. Every generation thinks the next generation is going downhill, but now we're acceleratingly going downhill towards this anti-human way of living. We need to be aware of that. However, we should not feel overwhelmed by that

because like you said, we will lose personal agency. And that's why I wrote these books to give power to parents that amid the storm, you are the guiding light. You have power. You can still give your children an amazing childhood, a human childhood, a connected childhood, but you need to wake up. So don't lose hope and don't be mired in the cultural sweep.

You can still be your island in the matrix. Don't be seduced by the tide. But to get out of the matrix, you have to have power, you have to have your own community, you have to have the foresight to be discerning and pave the path for yourself and your children. So I have my own community of what I imagine, very conscious, awake seekers.

We're small but we're mighty. because I needed a community of sane people that I consider sane who are willing to fight the matrix, willing to stay human, and willing to go slow and be connected and to live in a slower way. And those are the principles I want to live by. And so I have to say no to a lot of things in the matrix. So these books are my permission and blueprint to parents

of how they can say no to the matrix, how they can resist the cultural sweep of the matrix, cultural sweep of the anti-human movement and become more pro-human and teach their children what it means to be connected. That is the essence of who we are. It's messy. It's heartbreak sometimes. It's chaotic.

But that is what it means to be a human. So to reclaim humanity, to reclaim humanness and to reclaim childhood is the parents' potential that we can offer our children. You know, I highlighted one of the mistakes you talk about with boy. and that's this idea of, you know, use your words and trying to get your young boy in your life, your baby. And I just had a baby as many of my audience knows. He's eight months, years old now.

And with girls, this is a really great one. You know, a top mistake that so many parents, well-intentioned parents make, is you're raising your daughter to be good instead of being heard. Can you talk about that? Yes. So all women listening to this will agree. that they've been raised to be good and not authentic.

Okay, all women have been raised with the stereotype of the good girl. And many, many women may rebel against that, but they will be rebelling against that stereotype. So most women know what the stereotype of the good girl is. It's a compliant girl, a docile girl, sweet girl, she's quiet, she's pleasing, she's accommodating, she's compliant, and she is super competent, she's best, Bad ass. She's a leader. She takes charge. Go figure how she can do both of those things, right?

Were you raised that way? I was raised more the good girl, but then I moved into, I also need to be a leader. I also need to be in charge, super competent. So I merged the two messages and became a lunatic, really. A high functioning codependent empath, right? Oh my goodness. Go figure that. Most women who will hear this will understand. because there are many of them. There are millions of us out there. Undiagnosed, high functioning, codependent, empath. Good girls.

Okay? Basically, be all things to all people, be excellent at everything, super perfect. Left brain, right brain, turned on. Alpha female, but super docile and lovely and lets the man feel like a man. And we can do everything, okay? In one day.

In your life, just because I have you here, right? Yes, in your life, right? You're explaining this bigger thing. But just to make it real to you, where was that coming from? Was that your mom? Was that your aunties? I know it's society, right? But the direct expression of that, where was that coming and being projected on you?

So first and foremost, it's as pervasive as the air you breathe. So there's no point pinpointing it because you're breathing it everywhere you go. That was the culture. You grew up in India. In India. That was just the soup that you were in. Yes. But Drew, let me tell you, when I came to America, 21.

I idealized the Western woman. And I said, oh, she must not grow up with my stereotype. She must be free and unfettered from the bullshit I grew up with. And Drew, let me tell you. No, it's here too. Oh, my goodness. Of course. And I felt so bad for the Western woman.

I was like, you too, you know, you should be free at least. At least I, you know, I had no choice. I was so embedded in a very traditional patriarchal culture. Anyway. But then I also had very very... amazing role models. What's one thing, you know, reading this book and raising conscious daughters and you're handing this to a dad, a mom, but especially a mom who's reading it.

What's one or two things your mom did or didn't do? Yeah. That you feel, right? And your mom is a human being, just like you are. You know, I loved the podcast episode that you did with your daughter. And multiple times your daughter is trying to call you on your own. And you're the first friend to say, look, we all have baggage. Yes.

Yeah. We all. But it's, do you know you have it and you're willing to show your kids, and to apologize a thousand times. Exactly. And to say, let's grow together. Let's be in therapy together. But going back to your mom. Yeah, so the things my mother didn't do,

I can freely tell you and I've told her a million times, is that exactly this topic we're talking about, she taught me to be good before she taught me to be good to myself. She taught me to be good to others before she taught me to be good to myself. And through her example, to this day, my mother is not good to herself as she's good to others. Okay, so you're saying this is something that your mom that did that is positive or negative?

No, negative. Negative, yes. I mean, I don't want to call it negative, but yes, it was to my detriment. It did not allow me to feel worthy. To follow. What others first before you think of yourself? Oh, 100%.

She didn't train me to look within more than to look without. And what I teach my daughter, and now I write in this book, Raising Conscious Daughters, is how to teach your daughters to tune in, to wait for their own inner voice to emerge, to wait for it.

You have to wait for it sometimes. And parents are so impatient that they give the opinion or they direct the child. But when you do that with a girl, because culture is already doing that, now you've compromised her. So in my book, I really emphasize the pillar of voice. I call it the pillar of voice,

where you need to let your daughter hear herself from a young age. So a two-year-old toddler girl, you need to ask her, Do you want to wear your red shoes or your blue shoes? But then you wait for her to discover what kind of shoes she wants. So even if you're getting late, wait. Because when she learns that she has a voice and that we will honor her voice, not every time,

but at least we will listen to it, she begins to activate that inner voice. Now, why is it more important with girls? It's because culture is so ready to talk over girls, right? Because that's the prevalent message. It's a man's world. have to fight to be heard, have to fight to be seen and honored. So that principle is so important for girls.

And so that's what my mother did wrong. And the other thing she did wrong is that she gave me a prescription list of what it meant to be a good woman, a successful woman, and a happy woman. And so now I'm divorced. I was basically like, oh, I've screwed up big time. Now I didn't, because by then I was evolved myself

and healed myself. You know, divorce for an Indian woman is the biggest curse. The biggest failure, you've let your family down. And if you let your family down, you're an absolute colossal waste of a human being. You know, the messages are that strong. Let's bring it back to the kids thing. Because one of the most important aspects

that's inside of this book is that you talk about how, when people say, okay, I get it. It's a mess. Yeah. Well, what do we do? And what I love about your answer, if I got it right, and you'll correct me, is it's the hardest thing in the world,

it's the simplest thing in the world. And the simplest thing is to be present, first and foremost, right? We live in a society that's pulling us away, even on an individual level, how often are you being pulled away from your child's gaze, your child's call for attention,

whatever it might be, by often now it's the smartphone. right? Technology in some phone or another. A lot of beautiful things with the smartphone, a lot of challenging things with the unintentional use that's there. So first and foremost is to be present. And then the second thing, which I'm saying is my second aspect of it. I don't know if you'd be your second aspect,

is that how are you also part of the problem? Yeah. How are you part of the problem? Because the power of responsibility says that if you know that you're part of the problem, that's a great thing. Because that means that you can do something about it. about it. If it's everybody else's fault, if it's some other person, if it's this culture, this group, these type of people have done it, then your mind is like, well, why even bother?

Exactly. They have all the control. You literally have hit the nail on the head. It's taking your power back from these systems outside because otherwise you become a victim to them and then you feel helpless and you feel apathetic. Then you just get resentful. And now you're blaming and staying in the blame victim cycle without breaking it. So that's why I wrote these books is because I'm calling parents back to their power and saying, yeah, it could be a storm out there,

but there's so much you can do. So take that power, wake up, do the work. It's simple and it's so very difficult. It's the hardest thing. Hardest thing in the world. And if you think you ever figured out, your kids are probably too small for you to really know any better.

Yeah, they're sleeping all the time. Yeah, exactly. So you have an eighth month old right now. You're flourishing. You're in the glow of this early period, which is so beautiful. And there's a reason nature made it like this, I think, is so bonding could occur. You know, it's the glow where the child doesn't say much, doesn't push back. And you have this feeling of competence.

And you're like, ah, but you're bonding. And then wait till your child becomes two and three and becomes a force of its own and says, no, Daddy. And now you're going to have to regulate yourself. So self-regulation. So the easiest thing in the world is to be present, to love, to give, to receive. But the hardest thing in the world is to be aware of your bullshit, right? Is to heal yourself, is to realize you are part of the problem, if not the whole problem.

That is the hardest part of the job. With another aspect that you also took around the book, you're part of the problem, but that doesn't mean that you need to beat yourself up. Oh, no, no, no, no. actually a sense of a jokingly like it's the cosmic joke. You know what? It's a cosmic joke. I'm part of the problem.

Yeah. And it's funny. I'm just trying my best. I'm a human being. And I'm not going to beat myself up about it because that's actually the critical voice that's been inherited from generation and your uncle inherited and he was critical on you and they inherited and your mom inherited. It's just been passed down.

It's what Eckhart-Tolle calls like the universal pain body. Yes. Right. He just existed and it's just been kind of going on from one person to You are meant to eff it up. Like, to think you will not is your ego talking to you. Therefore, your guilt is ego's, you know, backlash on your own delusion that you're amazing and you're perfect.

You're supposed to mess it up. It's your delusion to even think, oh, my goodness, I'm messing it up. To even have that thought is coming from ego because you were delusional to think you would not mess it up. Now, I'm not saying that you should be arrogant about it. and not do anything about it. You should be compassionate,

but take it as a given that the task of parenthood is the task of self-healing. So they're synonymous. So if you think you have nothing to heal, you will not be the parent, because parenting is parenting yourself. They go together. It is part of the whole process

that few people talk about, of course, now they do, but when I started writing conscious parenting, it was a new concept, right? it was like, I'm a parent and I may or may not do the inner work. They were seen as it was an optional thing. And what I tried to do is teach the parent that being a parent is to raise yourself. You cannot raise your child without raising yourself, which means you have to be humble to realize that you have raising to do,

which means you have healing to do. So when the child shows up and lets you look in the mirror of your own soul, look, don't be afraid, right? Every judgment to your child is a judgment to yourself. Every anger at your child is helplessness of your own in a child. Allow this relationship to wake you up. Look in that mirror, don't be afraid, right? What is your child trying to show you about you?

Right? You're not patient. Ooh, you're judgmental. Oh, you want your child to be skinny like this and successful like this. Look at you. You can't bear when your child comes last. in class or in the race,

oh, you want your child to sit in the front of the choir, not in the back of the choir. You begin to notice how fragile you are and how much you want to live your best self through your child, the self that you never could live through your child's life. You actually had a statement, and this is going to rub parents the wrong way, but sometimes the truth does that. So many people end up having kids

because they want some form of a trophy. Yes. Talk about that. Well, I think we are all carrying unheeled baggage from childhood. And we're all grieving and we're hurting and we're wounded. But we don't even know it, many of us. And then when we have a child unconsciously, we feel like we finally have an opportunity to redeem ourselves for redemption.

So it's almost as if we raise our child in a way to redeem our own brokenness. So if I wasn't good at piano, I'm going to make my child the best piano player so I can heal that part of me that felt so bad because I wasn't a good piano player, for instance. Or if I'm still carrying a wound around, I don't know, being not athletic or not beautiful or not skinny, I'll finally be able to manipulate this being to become that part so I can feel redeemed. and like, okay, I'm good enough.

So we use our children to fulfill that part within ourselves, but it's unconscious. And part of what I teach in conscious parenting is to wake up to that part. How are you using your child to fulfill your own fantasy? Are you pushing your child to play the piano because your child is asking to play the piano, clearly? Or is it because it's a part in you?

And then parents will say to me, but it's good for the child. I said, sure, but so is... a million other things. So then, right? How much are we going to push our children? Right? And ultimately, what need is it serving in the child

and what need is it serving in you? Because at the end of the day, there are million things that are good for your children that you're not going to do. What nail are you going to hang your hat on? And to what degree? It's an excuse. What's really good for your child

is that you learn to honor who it is they are in their essence and you accept them for who it is they are, unconditionally. If you can give your child unconditional acceptance, safety, to be themselves, they will grow up to be forever anchored in a resilience, in an inner power, and will not seek that in codependent, abusive, toxic relationships, or substances, they will have that internal inner connectivity. I remember when somebody asked me, when my daughter was young,

who do you wish she grows up to be? And I said, all things I'm not, you know, and all things I never could be. And the most of that is a girl who grows into a woman who feels like she belongs to herself, who knows herself, that her worth will not come from a male gaze or a female gaze,

from a trophy or a corporate corner office or a diamond or jewel or how many cars she has in her driveway. Her worth will come from her inner connection to her purpose, her passion, and herself. You know, when I was reading your books, a couple things stood out for me that I want to acknowledge that, you know, my mom and dad who listened to this podcast, shout out to my mom and dad.

One of the things that my mom never did when I was reading the, you know, the relationship to the boys and the book, Raising Conscious sons. My dad very, was aware of like how he wanted to be as a dad and how he was raised by an incredible dad and what that looked like and the things he wanted to bring in. My mom kind of was raised in a household that was very anxious, her father kind of very struggled and projected and his fears and other stuff. And so I don't think my mom was doing this on purpose. But there was almost this jovial part of her, this kid-like part of her, where one thing she never did,

which I had never heard of any Indian mom, you know, doing this to any of my friends, cousins, other She never used the phrase of, like, what will they think? That was one thing I never heard my mom say. And then the sister to that was she never would say, this person's doing this. Why aren't you doing that? The comparison component, which a lot of parents think will be used as fuel to motivate, you know, the tiger mom in the Asian culture or, you know, the Indian culture that's there. And, again, I don't think she was doing it on purpose, but there was a beautiful. in that, that all three of my sisters, and, you know, my mom did her best and there was all the things

that were challenging for her and stuff that she projected on us, and my dad did his best, and, you know, there was things that were challenging for him. But that was very unique, and I think both my sisters really benefited from that, that's there. And I think a lot of people that are in my generation that are having kids, you know, I'm a millennial, but, you know, plus or minus my friends are having kids in this, you know, 10 years, I think they're trying to be very aware of the how that they grew up in and the parents. I'm hearing conversations and dialogue, not just because I live in L.A.

I think I have friends all over of parents and couples really asking themselves, like, how do we really want to show up and best be there for our kids? And what kind of container do we want to create? And how do we, a lot of the conversation I feel like, probably a lot of them have read your books, is how do we catch ourselves early because we will be making these mistakes?

and in a way that still instills security amongst our kids, show our kids that we're a human being too and that we're going to mess up. For any parents who's listening, that's something that my parents didn't do because that wasn't really the conversation that was happening. I don't think my dad, even though he did a great job, was saying, like, look, I messed up, this is what's there.

He apologized for stuff, but it wasn't that dialogue that exists today. For parents that want to bring that in, The way that you talk about bringing that in with your daughter, who's now 23. Yeah. What are some do's and don'ts around that, around this idea of like owning when you make a mistake and how to talk about it at different stages of life?

Yeah, it's a really powerful gift you can give your children when you can show up as an imperfect but a regulated human being. What I mean by that is, you know, in this new age of like sharing everything with your kids and showing up imperfect, sometimes we can go too far and make our children our best friend or our therapist. Which has many problems.

Many problems. On its own. Everything from like extreme ameshment. You parentify your children. They become mature, but they're carrying the burden of your emotional dysregulation. So you never want them to be a therapist.

And at the end of the day, they're looking to you to sort of set this tone and structure. And the stability and the leadership, right? You're still there, leader, you're still the container that they need to feel safe in, that this adult knows where we're going. Yeah. Having said that, it's a beautiful gift to show up and admit and take accountability for

imperfection. But just that act of owning, admitting and taking accountability is a very regulated act, right? So we don't just say sorry, you know, saying sorry is like level one. I'm so sorry. But the next thing is you truly create the action and the accountability for the change. Next time Mommy does this, you know, you need to, you know, tell her no,

or you go take care of yourself, or next time Mommy does this, she's going to do this. So, you know, we create a pathway for an agreement that we are going to create change. and let the child feel empowered to make different choices, you know, and teach them that they can make different choices as well, and I'm going to work hard to make different choices as well. You know, so my daughter now, you know, when she was even 10 and 11,

she used to say, why are you sorry? You know, as I say, I'm so sorry, I lost my on you or whatever. And I taught her to ask the question, but why did you? Right. why are you losing your mind? So she says to say, okay, thank you for saying sorry, but why? Why did you do that, right? It's not enough just to say sorry.

We have to show our children that, you know, we are taking accountability. We're looking within, of course, developmentally appropriately, and we're going to work on it. That is accountability, not just saying sorry. It's taking charge of our unconsciousness and then making a pathway for change and agreeing to it together, allowing them to feel empowered, that they don't have to tolerate constantly being a victim of our unconsciousness, you know, empowering our children to walk out of the room to say, no, mommy, that's not fair. Now, that's very threatening for parents to give so much power to their children. And that's why parents actually don't say sorry in a whole and complete way,

because they feel like, I don't need to give so much power to my child. You know, so what if I made a mistake? But they don't understand that it's not about giving power away. It's about sharing power and connecting through that empowerment. Empowered children actually are more connected children. Disempowered children are disconnected children, right? But we get that all wrong because we're so threatened by sharing power. We want to have all the power.

And we think it's either we have the power or they have the power. But we're sharing power. And when two people feel like they both are empowered, even if the child is eight years old, to their circle of power, to their degree, that child grows up more connected to themselves and therefore more connected to you. So let's share power developmentally appropriately,

but not look at it like power is limited. And if I give away my power, I'm going to have less. I talked about my mom, my dad, related to the next point that I want to bring up, one of the things that I think that he did really well is he grew up in a household where he often says that he didn't even know that he had one mom. Yeah. Until like the age, like he knew that, okay, this is my prime. This is my mom. Yeah.

But he just thought like because he's in this sort of household in a community where we have aunties and other stuff, he thought, oh, these are all like my different versions of like my mom. And I know I call her auntie and this and that. But I didn't know I just have one mom, which sounds kind of crazy. You can't imagine American kind of thinking that, you know, somebody growing up in America now. But because he grew up in that and he had uncles and aunts and so many people and his dad's friends and other stuff. And this was way back in the day in Kenya. It's a different society now. There was always this understanding that only so much can come from the parents.

How much of this modern day problem around budding heads with parents and kids do you think is coming from the fact that like, you know, we're almost too isolated? Everything is on the mom a lot. some things are a lot on the dad dads today are spending more time with their kids than ever before these new dads that are there they're aware of stuff everything is on the parents and we don't necessarily have this sort of

even modern day version of a village and so there's just too much concentration so there's more friction that's there it's kind of like how estera perelle would say like we're expecting too much from our husband we're expecting too much from our wife what we used to get from an entire community we're now expecting from one romantic partner.

How much of that is part of the problem? The greatest modern tragedy is this isolated nuclear pair bond family where most of the things fall on the mother, the modern mother, who now wants to be also a career woman and look amazing and be a philanthropist and all power to her, but she's only one person. And then she's often a single mother. or the father is emotionally or physically absent, in some cases. The greatest tragedy is this couple that has all the pressure

that the village needed to absorb. And children growing up with only two crazy people versus 50 crazy people. Like today I want to go to that crazy uncle, right? Today I want that kind of crazy, not this kind of crazy. And I'm stuck with this kind of crazy every day. I want like different crazy to help me. become a well-rounded crazy person, right? I only have two.

And they're stressed out and they're fighting with each other. One has had an affair. One is a divorce. The child is going to be unhealthy because this is not how we were supposed to be raised. And again, I'm talking about back in the day, when you had that web, when I went to visit the Hudson,

I couldn't tell which child belonged to which mother. I couldn't tell. And there was a fire. And the child went right next to the fire, little two-year-old and he knew where to stop because he understands nature. The goat was skinned right in front of his eyes, blood, death, life happening right before him. Nobody protected the two-year-old, the three-year-old, the five-year-old. But the most beautiful thing I took away was I did not know who the mother was.

Now, some people would look at that and say, well, that's, you know, there's this like term now. People call like, trad wife, trad-relationship. Like, that's extreme trad-relationship. The men are being men, the women are being women. I'm talking about community thought. I'm just saying what some people would say, we're idolizing that. Right.

Women do women things. Women raise the kids. Women spend time with each other. They're there. This is responsibility. There's no women trying to be men. There's no men trying to be women in terms of modeling the roles, right? And men are out there and they're doing their job, protecting the village and, you know,

hunting for food, getting honey. Children need maternal energy. Why? Because women are wired with oxytocin and estrogen to far greater degrees and a woman's capacity to bond with her child or another child. Any children is far greater than men who have testosterone and they can go out there and go on the skyscraper and clean the windows, okay? Some things are wired.

We don't have to go to extremes, but we have to acknowledge that there are differences in our brain. If we can acknowledge that menopause is a real thing, we can acknowledge this, okay? People can be okay with this. It's okay to have the reality exists that children do well with women. They do well with their maternal energy.

It could be the auntie, could be the... Doesn't mean fathers don't have a role to play, but fathers have a more essential role a little later in life. I'm talking about the first two, three years, children do well in maternal presence. And so you can outsource it to nannies and aunties and uncles. But this is a fact. I mean, ask any mother, any child, they will be like, I want my mom.

I want my mom, right? You can try as best to send them to the best dad in the world. The child will want the mother. There's something about that bond that is biological, that is just natural, and it's okay. It doesn't mean that women have to be in the house 24-7, and it doesn't mean they can't go out there and have purpose and in Korea. But they have to accept that this is their privilege. I think it's a privilege that I get to be a woman and I get to be a mother and I get to have maternal energy

and oxytocin. It's my strength, it's my power. I see no reductionism in being told I'm a more of a connector than a conqueror. I conquer through connection. There's no competition here, right? So children need maternal energy. Fathers are important, but in the early years, they need that maternal bond. They need that connection that women tend to give much easier, faster, better. Yeah, I was just highlighting it from the standpoint of, like, there's the pros and cons with every group,

and if we idolize them, you know, like when we went to go visit this tribe, Samburu, one of these modern-day hunter-gatherer, cousin of the Maasai, you know, largely living on, you know, like foraging blood from, you know, cows, milk. Most of their diet is milk. I was there with this group from Summit Series. And it was probably like 60% were women and 40% were men. And we were sitting down with this culture.

And we're sitting down with the women and we get a chance to like, they let you like, so with these tribes, like, you get a chance to ask them questions. And they get a chance to ask you questions as well too. And this particular group we went to, they hadn't really met the new, like the Americans that came into this, you know, public, private partnership with this group. And some of the women inside of the group were looking at, you know, they got a chance to ask questions back and they were asking a couple women in the group, oh, like, if you're here, who's watching your kids?

Yeah. And there was two women in particular that were like, oh, like, I'm not married. I've chosen not to have kids and this is where I am. And the look on their face was like, you literally told them you were an alien. Yeah. Right? Yeah. They were asking, like, if you don't have kids, how do you know your purpose in life?

Oh. Right? And obviously there's something really beautiful about that. Yeah. And there's, that's within that limited view of the, of the world that they have. And I'm just thinking that, you know, some of these traditional societies that have, the groups that have been around throughout history, the world was a little bit simpler. Yeah. Things were a little bit simpler. But they looked through the world in this lens.

And through being part of this modern construct, which capitalism is a part of, we've offered choice. And women get, and men and families and couples. we have this tricky thing where you have to intentionally fight for what type of life do you want to design? Does it work for you and does it work for your family? And I think that's an important and healthy thing because if you believe in, if you take the belief of any particular group

without questioning it, whether it's a traditional group or modern day, let's call it modern day feminism saying, oh, you don't have to have kids at all, just live your own life, maybe the extreme version of that that you've talked about before is, oh, it's your body, it's your choice. If you decide to go make money on only fans,

and that's your way of rising above the system that's there, right? So if you... I've talked about it in a different context. In a different way. You're pushing back on that saying, look, you're just objectifying your body and being part of that system that you're criticizing. The reason I'm laying out this landscape is that we have more choice than ever as individuals, as a couple, as family,

as parents trying to raise kids. And a huge part of what I'm taking away from this book for me and my wife is what's impeding in our ability to be present with each other and our son. And secondarily, how can we actively fight against the rushing of society, which has all these downstream effects? Where can we actively slow down? Because if you are so back to back in. your calendar throughout the day. No matter how hard you try, if that's your day and how it's

scheduled, good luck being patient with your child. If you're in a traditional school system and the school has one way of looking at things and treating everybody the same and not understanding that boys have different energy than girls and kids learn differently at different speeds, good luck trying to thrive inside of that system. Yes, yes. So as much as you can slow down and choose the values for you and your family and be present and have those conversations as a couple trying to raise a conscious child in this generation in day and age, that at least gives you some barrier

to push against the inertia that's a tidal wave that's trying to drive you into this algorithm. That's the way that I see it. Absolutely. And that you have choices now in this modern world that are confusing at times, that are overwhelming at times, and therefore going inward and silencing the external noise and really paying attention to what your consciousness requires to thrive is important.

Don't do it for the trend. Don't do it because you're feminist. Don't do it because you're anti-feminist and tradition. Don't do it for anything on the outside. And be educated with science about if you're choosing to be a parent, what children need. Just developmentally. You know, so many of us become parents without taking it.

a single developmental psychology course. And in addition to general development, we need to pay attention to how boys are uniquely wired and how girls are uniquely wired. And there is a difference. Every parent of boys and girls will tell you that they came out different. And within that, there are even more differences, right?

So we have to be attuned and aware. And being a parent is the most beautiful thing and the most heartbreaking thing in the world to do. And if you're ready to take on that challenge, and you're ready to evolve and you're ready to look in the mirror, there will be no more powerful journey you can undertake than being a parent. I mean, it is the way of the warrior, it is the way of the seeker, it is the way of the lover, you get to love, you get to receive love,

but you get to be confronted in your unconsciousness like few relationships will ever confront you. If you're willing to take on the challenge, and if you are willing to look in the mirror, you would see parts of yourself that have been longing to be healed and now as you raise your real child you have the opportunity to raise the inner child

that you left you know I like to say on the sidewalks of your childhood you get to go back and pick that little girl or boy up as well and raise that little child with your real child. So beautiful. Dr. Chavale this is such an important conversation we got on a couple tangents I think important tangents

You know, if people are here for this conversation, they can ride along with all the different viewpoints and the landscape that were sharing that's out there and this milieu that we're all growing up in and trying to raise kids in. And everybody's just trying to do their best. And we're looking for these tools. It's one of the reasons that I'm so appreciative.

You know, like, there wouldn't be another time in history that you in 2010 could have written the book that you wrote. And now through, sure, it has a lot of problems, but through social media, parents can find things and get access. Like, even if our parents wanted to, they couldn't. They couldn't. Yes.

I know deep down inside, you are an optimist, because just like there's you who's driving this conversation, there's so many more people that are aware, it's almost like the problem has gotten so bad. And it doesn't take everybody to wake up. It just takes a few people to wake up and start saying, here's a different way to do things, and that provides enough of a resource

where the ones who are open to it can start pulling. It's not easy. It's a tough battle, but it's never been easier than before in the history of humanitarian because at least exist. Yeah, it's never been easier to grow, to evolve, to connect, to change, to transform. Never been easier to be educated. And it's never been harder. It's never been harder.

There's never been more resistant. More resistance. And never been harder to connect person to person, heart to heart in the messiness of ordinary human relationships. So we have to fight for that. And these books are my wake-up call, my urgent rallying cry to parents. Let's fight for this interhuman connection

because it is one of the most beautiful things that we must preserve at all costs for our health and sanity, but more so for our children's thriving and well-being. Absolutely. Dr. Chavali, thank you for coming on the podcast. The books are out there. People can pre-order them, raising conscious daughters, raising conscious sons. You promised to give me a little to the backstory.

I'm sure your publisher had a heart attack when you told them that you want to come out with two books at the same time, but I'm so glad you did. A heart attack. They thought I was crazy and seriously, I mean, begged me to reconsider and gave me all sorts of worst-case scenarios. None of them will sell.

Each one will cannibalize each other. not going to get on any list, you know that. And I was very aware, you know, it's hard enough to sell two books, but now I've divided the attention, right? So I would have sold two conscious sons books, but now I'm like, I've killed it, right? But I did it with intention, I did it with purpose, and with consciousness, and not capitalism, or competition with the goal.

And my goal was to have an honest dialogue about the spectrum of human experience. And I could not talk about the girls without talking about talking about the boys. They're so connected. They're part of one duology. And I needed to pay reverence to both together and not do the boys now and then come back later next year for the girls. I mean, I just couldn't do that. So, yes, I will not, you know, be successful in terms of traditional terms, but I feel like I'm offering parents a real unique opportunity into the worlds of both sexes from a very unique conscious perspective and to see it as a spectrum, to see it as a

continuum, but to understand the uniqueness of each as well. Well, I would say it is the best expression of capitalism, and it's the best expression of competition, because it's truly intentional living. You have a choice. Yeah. A roadmap to intentional living on one side. Yeah. And the unintentional algorithm that will swallow you, your marriage, your kids' life,

comparison, ads, and other stuff. And it's a de facto system, right? Yeah. It's just the thing that people inherited. Nobody sits down in the morning and says, I want my kid to see a bunch of ads and my wife to see a bunch of ads, and I want my wife to see a bunch of comparison

and be inundated with beauty and my husband to feel this way and that way. Nobody says that, but they inherited that system. So to me, it's like we have to push against that system. We have to fight. And I see you leading that battle. Yeah, you're right. I never realized.

It's the best of capitalism. It's the best of competition. Yeah. I'm here for it. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hi, everyone, Drew here.

Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about.

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